Life and Death of Empires

Empires are all the same by nature. Whether it was a Monarchy of England, Democratic USA, Fascist Germany or Socialist Russia. All empires have a pretty much similar Imperial agenda. It doesn't matter whether you have a Christian or Muslim king on the throne. Likewise it doesn't depend on the colours of its flag or the skin of its ruler. Whether you have a smart-Black or dumb-White President,  they all have a job card waiting for them, well before they finish the last sentence of their swearing in ceremony.

All of them eventually get trapped in their job description. Sometimes they have the option to get out of this trap if they leave their Imperial agenda unfinished,  which basically means that they can leave only when they seize to be an Empire.

How far you can go depends on your intellect and conviction. Man with little intellect can stop and think but a man of conviction have to keep on marching.

One of the toughest thing for an Emperor (President) is to give up his imperial ambitions. This applies as much to Alexander the Great as it does to Nobel peace laureate Obama. It continue to expand until it starts contracting and drop dead. Rarely they bring the troops home without getting their imperial pride completely shattered.

Lucky ones, such as China and Japan get defeated earlier on in their outward journey due to economic or military reasons. Unlucky ones like Germany, Soviet Russia and the US of America win few wars and move on to the next round of suicidal mission.

Their military machine becomes so heavy and thick, like the walls of their embassies, that it becomes impossible to transport it back to the motherland. Their wars become unsustainable especially when their rivals are light weight and light budget, such as communist Guerrillas of Vietnam and Taliban of Afghanistan.

Another characteristic about modern stupid Empires is that they portrait as Peace Keepers or Democracy Builders who are only there to help the people they occupy. They don't demand any tribute for their country, just few favourable oil and defense contracts for their favoured corporations.

Sometime you don't care what your army will bring back home, you just wish you can bring your army back. When it is too late, it is known as Imperial path at a point of no return.

The State; an Evil and Unnecessary Institution

The State and its Taxes; an Evil and Unnecessary Institution of Economic and Political Slavery

“One can’t avoid Taxes and Death”, that’s what we are taught, by the State of course. Let us agree with Death part of the statement and examine the Taxes whilst we are still alive. Death was here long before some one was taxed for the first time. Taxes only came to existence few thousand years ago, primarily in the form of human slavery. Its journey from slavery to modern income tax encompasses few hundred types such as property tax, goods and service tax, salt tax, health tax etc. They all are curse on us and they take away part of our life under the threat of coercion. That’s why the State as its driving force is a predominately an anti-social institution.

The common man, under the influence of mass education and mass media cannot imagine living without taxes and governments but when a man of integrity receives a tax bill, or a law is passed restricting use of his native language or his religious beliefs, a part of him is murdered. He doesn’t want to say yes and he can’t say no. When someone, a group or class rules over others, including him, he feels it like a condition of slavery.

Human material needs can only be met by two distinct ways. One is through economic means like a farmer growing a crop or a factory worker producing some goods. Secondly through political (parasitic) means, taxing the producers by using the state power to do so. The political one is by far an easy and more desirable option for many of us.

When we study the origin of any state, we find the evidence of conquest from the defeated owners of the former State and seizure from current economic producers under the pretext of taxes. Every country has a limited quantity of human social power. Any power and wealth that we see in the hands of the State was basically taken away from its citizens sometime in the past. One can trace down every single penny in the State’s coffers to a working human being.

Winner’s reward can have many forms. In the times of Genghis Khan it could be women, cattle or horses; In the times of Alexander the Great it was gold and silver coins but these days, in the times of Bush and Obama, it is mainly energy resources such as Oil and Gas. Sometime it is simply a contract of future sales under the terms and condition of the winning side. A State cannot exist without economic exploitation of some sort. Anyone who controls a state, even for a short while, can and does uses it for the benefit of himself, his family, his supporting group or the class it represents and Nothing Else.

Total power in the hands of any society and its Sate is pretty much constant. What one has the other side is deprived of it. The other characteristic of a State is that it has to keep increasing its power all the time to remain in power. In that process, it accumulates disproportionally high power and not enough social power to hold its weight. At that point, it also becomes extremely complex in its composition, and then it has to collapse.

Institution of State was never designed for the benefit of all It is simply there to protect the winner from the loser group or class. Abolish or curtail any future threat to its authority from internal and external powers. Minister of Interior, Home Minister, Foreign Minister and Secretary of State are not just fancy designations. They have a specific role to play. They are slaves of the State too. Most of the job is already cut out for them when they take charge. That’s why millions of people feel disheartened when they don’t find any substantial change in a country’s foreign and internal policies with the change of governments within the same State. That’s why commander-in-chief Obama could not even order the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison, let alone shutting down over one hundred army bases around the globe. Not until the Empire State seizes to be an Empire State.

All States, like all businesses collapse one day when cost of maintaining them exceeds the return on their investment. Never think that a State can defend you from any foreign aggression, it can merely force its citizens to defend it. A State uses its full force of guns and boots to keep its monopolistic control over its market territory, its participants and keep away other competing foreign state monopolies. It can only exist as a monopoly and no other way. That’s why when a territory of any state wants its independence to break away, it is classified as a separatist movement and crushed with full State force.

One can bring a government to justice but State is always above law, until it is gone. So you have to either capture it for your class benefit or dismantle it for the benefit of all. Think twice when you pay your next tax bill or vote for electing someone to rule over you. Each tax dollar and each vote transfer a part of your power to the State. At the same time discard this suggestion as rubbish if you happen to be in the ruling elite political group of your State.

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Debt, Inflation and Democracy

The parliamentary democratic elections are predominately a contest of promises. Promises to give more than what is actually on hand. The only situation where this deception can work slickly is when the tax collected from a minority of producers is sufficient to spread across majority of eligible voters. Parliamentary leaders are essentially professional risk assessors and fund managers; calculating and speculating the marginalised voters’ response to their election promises. The only difference from private sector is that state funds are collected with force and management fee is quite exuberant.

Human societies, like other creations of nature, are evolving all the time; from simple to more complex ones. Then a time comes when they become too complex and can not withstand their own burden. They break down to simpler forms, if they are lucky. Alternatively they vanish and give chance for others to attempt. Our parliamentary democratic system is no exception.

This Socio-Political-Economic model of industrialised economies is not dead yet. It is merely approaching its advanced stage and getting exhausted. Very much like the American Empire at the present, but has not attained the status of old British or Greek Empires.

This system of governance; which is over a century old in many countries, relies on heavy taxes, numerous ‘social welfare’ schemes and economic subsidies. This extremely powerful and successful political system is like an old warrior, with plenty of victory medals on its chest is not willing to go down without a fight.

During the last two centuries, due to an explosion in the human population and availability of newfound natural resources especially cheap oil and coal, creating surplus production, almost any system could have managed to stay afloat.

A point comes in the life cycle of each such economy, when the expenditure grows faster than the revenue. Then popular governments are unable to meet their election promises such as providing cheap food, electricity, public health and mass education. Giving more and taking less can work for a while, sometimes even for 100-200 years, but not for ever.

All such governments, without exception, start borrowing to spend and increase private and public debt until there is no one left to lend to them. By that time the total debt is beyond their capacity to repay honestly. Instead of defaulting and accepting their failure, they resort to printing paper notes with photos of dead leaders or presidents.

It is not a clerical mistake or calculation error by the central bankers that money supply is ever increasing in all countries since its creation.  Neither is it a coincidence that all the major world trade partners are running their printing presses round the clock and debasing their own currencies. It is quite sensible for the current rulers to pass on the debt to the future ones if they can get away with it.

Printing money is not painless but there is no other easy way out. This excessive money supply creates inflation and eventually hyperinflation. The public gets upset when they realise their standard of living is dropping. Their real wages are going down whilst cost of living, especially the food prices go up.

Occasionally these baffled citizens are forced to march on the streets demanding the replacement of the government that they themselves elected to the high office. It is almost like admitting that they made a mistake in the last election or they do not believe in next elections. They want their elected governments to bring the food prices down as if the governments can pass a law to print more food.

The angry voters are not prepared to listen to the truth. Not knowing the rationale behind this scenario, they want to hear answers that sound good to them. They listen to the candidate who promises to change the current system and remove the undesirable facts such as poverty, unemployment etc. Sometimes biggest liar gets the job.

The voters may not get what they want but usually get what they deserve. Either they get an army dictator or a new democratic government headed by someone who promises something more wonderful thus avoiding their collision with reality. The new incumbent promises to meet their list of demands.

On the other hand, voters have no desire to know who will pay for all these freebies and where the money will come from. If voters want less than what they pay to the government, why do they need someone to govern them?

If someone highlights the mathematical impossibility in spending more than their tax revenue, one is eliminated from the list of elected parliamentarians. It is democracy after all.  Democratically contesting political parties, and to some extent elected government is only answerable to the current pool of voters. To keep the present voters happy and under control, quite often, these governments have to borrow from future generations by selling national assets, both above and underground.

There are some other symptoms of this decaying model of governance. You might already be noticing the degeneration of human rights, increase in police and military presence and diminishing freedom of media in various parts of the world. These symptoms suddenly get lot worse when these ‘popular governments’ don’t have means to support their popular boondoggles.

Sometimes, these do-gooder politicians are so religiously convinced about their duty to improve the lives of their citizens as well as those of other sovereign countries, that they send their armies to spread their message of democracy. Taking risk to financially go broke and even borrows from their non democratic enemies. Their public and private debt increases beyond their ability to pay it back.

Can these governments cut back from the present level of expenditure? How would their voting citizens receive this? Would the tax paying citizens prefer to evade taxes and help themselves? Will there be a peaceful transition or bloody revolution? Who knows!